The Gab social media platform, suspended from the internet after last week’s mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, was under investigation by Dauphin County authorities and the FBI for a possible hate speech incident this year.

The site gained national attention Oct. 27 when authorities said synagogue shooting suspect Robert Bowers posted a message there threatening violence shortly before 11 worshipers were killed at the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh. Bowers had a long history of anti-Semitic postings before the massacre, according to authorities.

Gab had been an underground favorite among neo-Nazis, white nationalists and others with anti-Semitic and racist viewpoints. Last spring, one of its heavy users, Brendon Gaylor of Harrisburg, attracted the scrutiny of law enforcement.

During the run-up to the 2018 spring primary election, Gaylor repeatedly took to the web platform to express his loathing of anything progressive or left leaning.

“Why do we sit behind keyboards? Why aren’t we organizing and killing leftists in droves? What are we afraid of????????’” he wrote in one post.

Gaylor, a 24-year-old IT specialist with the state, described his Gab writings as free speech expressions not meant to threaten or incite violence. But his posts against a young Harrisburg politician ended up drawing the attention of local law enforcement.

Cole Goodman was campaigning last spring for a seat on the Democratic State Committee when he said he learned Gaylor was targeting him on Gab with racist posts and violent threats. Goodman, 24, is African-American. He won the committee seat and is planning a career in politics.

In one post, Gaylor included a photo of a machete, three knives and a pair of handcuffs. In others, he used a derogatory term for African-Americans.

Cole Goodman earlier this year felt threatened by this 2018 Gab post from Brendon Gaylor. A street address was removed from this image, taken from the Gab site.

The string of posts alarmed Goodman, who reported them to police and the FBI.

“That was very scary for me,” Goodman said this week. “When you are running for office and someone says ‘when does the shooting start?’ and this person is really targeting me? I definitely felt threatened.”

“He is an establishmentarian Democrat,” Gaylor said of Goodman. “Anything left wing is the enemy of the country. He’s local. ... Being black has nothing to do with it. It’s because of his political connections that I have a beef with him. It has nothing to do with his race.”

John Goshert, chief detective with the Dauphin County Criminal Investigation Division, said the investigation ended with no charges being filed. Asked about that outcome, Goshert said, “It seemed like a lot of his (Gaylor’s) stuff was veiled."

But Goshert said Goodman had every reason to be concerned: "In today’s world you have to take those things seriously. You are always walking that fine line between what is free speech and what is not but that is a decision that the DA’s office makes. But that whole social media thing has opened up an odd Pandora’s box.”

Gaylor, who continues to contend his posts were not threatening, said he was suspended from work for two weeks.

Goshert, who has been in law enforcement since 1975, said he is struck by what he describes as an empowerment inherent in social media.

“I call it keyboard courage,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to zap something out on a keyboard than to come out and confront somebody. ... It’s opened a whole new world for law enforcement.”

Cole Goodman, a member of the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee, earlier this year reported to police what he thought were threatening posts aimed at him on the social media platform Gab.

Goodman said the experience has caused him anguish and changed the way he conducts his life.

“I have been threatened,” he said. “My life has been threatened. When someone says let’s get guns and lets get Democrats. ... That’s a threat. It affected me. It was scary.”

In March, Goodman, a former Susquehanna Township school board member, was issued a citation after police found drug paraphernalia in his car. Goodman, who denied to police that the items belonged to him, told PennLive he thinks he was set up by Gab users, who, he said, had spread negative rumors about him on the platform.

“I have taken definite precautions to make sure I am not predictable to what I do,” Goodman said. “I never park in the same place and always under a security camera and I never walk alone … whether I‘m at school or downtown. I‘m never alone. I always feel like I‘m looking over my shoulder.”

FREE SPEECH AND SOCIAL MEDIA: A CONUNDRUM

The warp speed growth of social media has caught every aspect of society unprepared to deal with complex issues, observed Anne Toomey McKenna, professor of cyber law and policy at Dickinson Law School. A slew of factors make prosecuting perceived threats on social media sites difficult.

"People have turned the notion of the First Amendment on its head,” Toomey McKenna said. “The idea that a statement or a picture could go viral within a matter of minutes and circumnavigate the globe has really changed and challenged the notion of what is a First Amendment right and what is the responsibility of a platform where everyone in the world is connected.”

Social media networks have been urged to police their content. But that strikes at the heart of the debate over censorship of these websites.

“That is an incredibly difficult task..suddenly having to go through and pull content that appears to foment hate mongering...at same time doing this...that very act of editorializing....being requested by law enforcement and Congress and the public, is playing right into hands of those who see this is a big conspiracy to silence viewpoints,” Toomey McKenna said.

For the time being, social media platforms are subjected to virtually little regulatory scrutiny, leaving a wide open frontier for misuse.

“The sheer volume of content and sheer number of individuals accessing, viewing and creating content make it incredibly difficult to manage from a safety, security and speech standpoint,” Toomey McKenna explained. “The size and scope make it almost impossible.”

His social media platform, Gab, under scrutiny, founder Andrew Torba defends it against charges that it promotes violence. This screen shot was taken from a published interview on WBRE-TV in Wilkes-Barre.

GAB FOUNDER DEFENDS PLATFORM

Gab founder Andrew Torba has aggressively defended his website against charges it is a breeding ground for dangerous extremists in the wake of the synagogue massacre. The 27-year-old Scranton native left Silicon Valley a few years ago to launch Gab, setting up headquarters in Philadelphia. Torba has said he was disillusioned that the country’s software hub censored conservative viewpoints.

“It disgusted me,” Torba said. “I was horrified to find that this alleged terrorist was on our site. I fundamentally believe in free expression and the individual liberty and fundamental human right for everyone to speak freely.”

Torba said he has been cooperating with law enforcement in the mass shooting investigation. He hoped to have Gab back online this weekend.

Gab, a favorite social media platform with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, has been suspended from the internet in the wake of mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Platform users say the site does not endorse violence.

Bowers, the suspect in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, was charged Wednesday in a 44-count indictment accusing him of federal hate crimes. The 46-year-old Baldwin man pleaded not guilty Thursday to the federal charges. The attack is believed to be the deadliest attack on Jews in the United States.

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